Polk Street Schools
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During the 20th century, Polk Street was home to three public schools. The first opened in 1900 to meet the needs of the rapidly-growing Amarillo community. Bounded by Polk, Tyler, 12th and 13th Streets, the Red Brick School house supplied space for 284 students; the property also had sheds for the horses and donkeys belonging to students coming from ranches. In 1911, a brick building was completed south of the Red Brick School at 1300 Polk Street; it was named Amarillo High School. In 1921, the Red Brick School was razed to make room for a new, larger Amarillo High School, which opened the next year. The 1300 Polk Street building became Central Junior High School; it was later renamed Elizabeth Nixson Junior High School in honor of a former principal. In 1927, the empty space in Amarillo High School’s u-shape design was filled with a cafeteria, gymnasium and auditorium. Further additions were made in 1951 and 1952. In 1964, Nixson Junior High School was razed; other educational facilities were built on the site. Three years later, Amarillo High School integrated without major incident. A 1970 fire destroyed the main building’s third floor and the auditorium, and damaged the rest of the structure. Students attended classes in usable rooms and in nearby churches until it was decided to rebuild the high school on Danbury Street. The school board sold the block to Amarillo College, and the building at 1200 Polk was razed. Today, other structures from Nixson Junior High and Amarillo High School are still used. Although the former school buildings on Polk Street are no longer employed in primary and secondary education, the schools’ legacy lies in the vital contributions of the former students in the community, state and nation.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Polk Street in Amarillo hosted three public schools over the twentieth century, beginning with the 1900 Red Brick School, which kept sheds for the horses and donkeys ridden in by ranch children. A 1911 brick building became Amarillo High School, later joined by Central (Nixson) Junior High, and successive campuses rose and fell as the growing city rebuilt and expanded. Amarillo High integrated peacefully in 1967, and after a 1970 fire the school moved on, leaving the block to Amarillo College.
Why it matters
The Polk Street schools trace the growth of a Panhandle boomtown and the evolving story of public education, including school integration, across the American West.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Amarillo was a young town racing to catch up with its own growth. The railroads had turned the Texas Panhandle from open cattle range into a shipping crossroads, and families poured in faster than the community could build for them. In a place like this, a schoolhouse was not just a building — it was a promise that the town intended to last.
When the first Polk Street school opened in 1900, it served a community still poised between the ranching frontier and the modern city. The Red Brick School stood on a block bounded by Polk, Tyler, 12th and 13th Streets, and it had room for a few hundred students — a serious investment for a town still finding its footing.
Over the decades that followed, the nation moved through the Progressive era's faith in public education, two world wars, the postwar boom, and the long struggle over civil rights. Polk Street sat quietly at the center of all of it, its schools rebuilt and renamed as Amarillo grew from a railhead town into a Panhandle capital.
People & events
The story of these schools is really a story of a town outgrowing its own buildings, again and again. The Red Brick School opened in 1900 with space for 284 students — and, tellingly, with sheds out back for the horses and donkeys ridden in by children coming off the surrounding ranches. It is a small detail that captures an entire moment: a modern brick schoolhouse where students still arrived by saddle.
In 1911 a new brick building rose just to the south at 1300 Polk Street and took the name Amarillo High School. Ten years later the old Red Brick School was torn down to make room for a still larger high school, which opened in 1922. The 1911 building did not go to waste — it became Central Junior High, and was later renamed Elizabeth Nixson Junior High in honor of a former principal whose name the community chose to keep.
The buildings kept changing to meet demand. In 1927 the open space in the high school's U-shaped design was filled in with a cafeteria, gymnasium, and auditorium, and further additions came in the early 1950s. In 1964 Nixson Junior High was razed and new facilities took its place. Then in 1970 a fire tore through the main building, destroying the third floor and the auditorium and damaging much of the rest. Students carried on in the rooms that survived and in nearby churches until the district decided to rebuild the high school elsewhere, on Danbury Street, and sold the old block to Amarillo College.
Its place in the American story
Follow the Polk Street schools across the century and you are really watching the American public school itself grow up. The horse sheds behind the 1900 building belong to a rural, frontier nation; the cafeterias, gymnasiums, and auditoriums added in the decades that followed belong to the modern comprehensive high school that came to anchor towns all across the country.
One date on this marker carries special weight. In 1967, Amarillo High School integrated — and, as the inscription plainly notes, it did so without major incident. Across the South and Southwest, school desegregation was one of the defining and often painful struggles of the era. That a Panhandle high school made the change peacefully is a quiet but real part of that national story, and worth remembering alongside the places where it did not go so smoothly.
The deeper significance, though, is the one the marker itself names: the true legacy of these schools is not in their walls, which mostly no longer stand, but in the generations of students who passed through them and went on to shape their community, their state, and their nation.
If you visit
Come to this corner of downtown Amarillo and the first thing to understand is that most of what the marker describes is gone. The schools rose and fell here over more than a century, and the block eventually passed to Amarillo College. You are standing less on a preserved site than on a palimpsest — a place written over many times.
That makes it a spot for imagination rather than sightseeing. Picture the Red Brick School of 1900 with donkeys and horses tethered in the sheds behind it, then the successive high schools that grew, burned, and were rebuilt on the very ground beneath you. Look for any older structures still in use nearby; the inscription notes that some buildings from the Nixson and high school campuses survive and serve other purposes today.
It fits naturally into a walking tour of historic downtown Amarillo, a short detour that rewards a slow reading of the marker. Give it a few minutes, and the empty or repurposed block starts to feel crowded with a century of schoolchildren.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Elizabeth Nixson
Themes & tags
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